I Have Lost My Way(26)
At that moment, I wanted the chill in the room to go away. I wanted the distance between us to shrink. I wanted to buy a few more minutes of borrowed time. So I told him yes, I did want to fuck.
He lunged for me, and I lunged for him. I didn’t know if we were fighting or apologizing, declaring ourselves or saying goodbye, fucking or making love.
Maybe all of those.
After, we fell asleep curled into each other, like spoons.
I woke up, my phone lighting up with calls. It was Ammi. It was after six. I was meant to be home.
I left James in that hotel room, ran to the PATH, and ran home. I tried to imagine what it would be like to tell my parents. But it was like the Fijian bungalow; it existed somewhere out there in the world, but nowhere I could ever get to.
I got home late, concocting some lie to Ammi about losing track of time while studying for a big exam, and braced myself, as I did every Thursday, for the moment when Ammi would see through my lie with that radar of hers that allowed her to find a missing five dollars in her clients’ books, to sniff out any remotely fishy business in their ledgers. But it never happened. She believed me because, unlike the people whose books she did, she trusted me.
I pushed the food around my plate, making another excuse about how we’d had pizza during the study session. She frowned but took my plate, and I ran to the shower to rinse James off my skin.
In my bedroom, I checked my phone, but there was no text from James. I was logging on to the computer to see if he’d sent me a Facebook message when Abu popped his head in. I quickly minimized the screen.
“Everything okay?” he asked.
For the millionth time, I tried to imagine what it would be like to tell him. I am in love, I could say. His name is James.
“Can I ask you something?”
“You can ask me anything.”
“Why did Ammi get so angry when Saif married Leesa?”
“That woman does not always make it so easy.”
“I know, but Ammi was angry before she even met her.”
Abu sighed and came to sit down on the edge of Abdullah’s bed. “You must understand, beta,” he told me. “Your mother left her family behind to move to America. And sometimes she feels like America is making strangers of her children.” He paused and smiled. “Why? Have you met a girl?”
I am in love. His name is James.
“No,” I said, for once telling the truth.
Facebook pinged with a message, and my heart surged with the thought of talking to James. “I should get back to my work.”
The message was not from James but from my cousin Amir. We had not seen each other since that time he came to America, but over the past few years we had reconnected online.
How are you doing, cousin? read the message.
Not so good, I wrote.
He was online, even though it was five in the morning there. I saw the dots as he typed. Tell me what is wrong. Inshallah, I can help.
The words I could not confess to my father rose up in me, desperate for an audience, and my cousin, ten thousand miles away, the seed of it all, seemed not only safe but like qismat, like fate.
3
HUNGER
As they’re finishing up at the urgent care clinic, awaiting Nathaniel’s discharge papers, the doctor asks Freya for her number. And even though the doctor has provided ample evidence that he is both incompetent and a creep, and even though Freya’s creep radar is so finely tuned she could sell it to the CIA, the request does something to her heart. She designated herself Nathaniel’s emergency contact, and now the doctor is officially assigning her that role.
Freya is never in charge of anyone. Someone has always been in charge of her: first her father, then Sabrina, now Hayden. She writes down her number for the doctor, a little embarrassed by this surge of good feeling.
She is Nathaniel’s emergency contact. For today, anyhow, she is in charge of him. She no longer cares about whether or not he will sue her or whether Harun will sell her pictures. She is someone’s person.
After Freya hands him the paper, the doctor folds it into a square and deposits it into the breast pocket of his lab coat and with a smarmy smile asks: “You like martinis?” It takes Freya a moment to realize that she got it wrong (what else is new?) and the doctor is hitting on her.
Freya is an empty vessel once again, emptier yet for having been, at least momentarily, full. Just like that, she’s in a foul temper—extreme moodiness is evidence of diva mode, per her mother—feeling worse than she did after the miracle doctor sent her away with no miracle. Worse than she did in the park after she’d seen Alex Takashida’s Facebook post (She said yes!).
Freya never gets asked questions she wants to say yes to. Freya is in charge of no one. Freya is liked by millions, needed by none.
Fuck it. She no longer cares if Harun has pictures of her on his phone. Let him sell them. Why shouldn’t he cash in on her somewhere-between-buzz-and-celebrity status before it’s too late? Someone ought to.
Her mother was right. She should just go home and watch Scandal.
Except she doesn’t want to go home and watch Scandal. She doesn’t want to do anything. The last few weeks have been bleak. Whole desolate stretches of hours. The thing that used to soothe her—logging on, chatting with her fans, or at least seeing what they were saying about her—now torments her. She can’t stop hearing Hayden’s prophecy: your fans will forget you, your numbers will drop, you’ll go back to being like everyone else.